Vellum Help
Using a Custom Border
With a custom Page Border, you can add decorative flourishes to the margins of your book:
Page Borders are a fun way to add a bit flair to your book while still keeping the text legible.
Borders are only applied to your print edition
- Watch the Video
- Creating a Custom Border
- Border Controls Overview
- Layout Controls
- Adding an Image
- Coverage and Sizing
- Mirror on Left Side
- Multipage Borders
- Creating an Image Template
- Applying to Different Elements
Watch the Video
You can see how to decorate your margins with borders in this video:
Creating a Custom Border
To add a custom border, you’ll need to locate the Background and Border feature style:
- Go to the Styles pane
- Click on the Configure button of your selected Style
- Select Background and Border
Now, press the Create Custom button that appears below the style carousel.
You will be presented with a dialog that lets you choose what kind of background or border to create:
Choose Page Border and press Create.
✨ This feature was added in Vellum 3.9. Make sure you are up-to-date.
Border Controls Overview
After you’ve created your custom border, you’ll see these controls, which allow you to add an image and configure how it appears.
Layout Controls
To change the layout of your background, use the Page Span and Image Extent controls.
Page Span specifies whether the image takes up a single page or spans an entire two-page spread.
Image Extent determines how much of the page is filled by the image:
When a border spans a spread, Full Bleed will automatically be selected.
Adding an Image
To add an image, click the
widget to choose one from your files,
or drag an image here from the Finder:
Coverage and Sizing
You can use a border to decorate the top, bottom, and outside margins of pages:
The inner text area is inaccessible by borders. Vellum will automatically exclude any content from this area of your image.
Note: Borders will appear on top of a Background or Full Page Image. When layering, make sure the border image you provide has a transparent background.
Multiple Margin Borders
To add borders to multiple margins (e.g. the top, bottom, and outside), you can use an image that is the same size as the page:
For best results, you should provide an image that matches the Ideal Size for your setup:
Single Margin Borders
Alternatively, you may want a border on only one side of the page. To add a border to just the outside margin, you can use an image that is tall and narrow:
This image should be the same height as the displayed Ideal Size, but can use a narrower width, e.g. 200 × 2775.
For a border in just the top or bottom margin, you can use a short and wide image that is the same width as the Ideal Size, e.g. 1838 × 200.
When you provide a narrow or short image, Vellum will display a Position control, which you can use to align your image to the top, bottom, or outside edge of the page:
Mirror on Left Side
The Mirror on Left Side control will flip your image horizontally when it appears on the left side of a page spread.
This can be useful for border images that are directional:
Note: This control is only shown when Page Span is set to a single page.
Multipage Borders
To make your decorations more dynamic, you can use a border that changes over the course of a chapter, like these illustrations that show a different moon phase on each page:
Multipage Images
You can achieve effects like these with a multipage image, where each page represents a unique border.
The PDF format is perfect for specifying images like these. Our example above was created using a PDF with the following pages:
Multipage images are indicated by a
badge in the upper-right corner of the image well. When you hover over the thumbnail,
a tooltip will display the size of the image and the number of pages:
Multipage Repeat
Each page of a multipage image will be applied to a page in the chapter. You can use Multipage Repeat to control the behavior when there are fewer pages in the image than in the chapter.
- None
- No borders are displayed once they have all been used
- Last Pages
- The last two border pages are repeated until the end of the chapter
- All Pages
- All border pages are repeated until the end of the chapter
Forced Edges
One common use case for multipage borders is to add artwork to the edges of your book using a technique called forced edges. Forced edges work by placing artwork in the bleed region so that, when the pages are trimmed, the color of this artwork can be seen from the side:
To learn more about this technique, read our guide to Applying Forced Edges.
Creating an Image Template
If you need help getting an image to the exact size recommended by Vellum,
click the
button to
create a template:
You can use this template as a guide in image editing software, or send it to a designer. If you need a template before you begin formatting, you can also make use of pre-made Full Bleed Image Templates.
Applying to Different Elements
The first Page Border you add will, by default, apply to All Chapters.
In some cases, you may want a border to apply to different group of elements. If your book contains Parts or Volumes, then you can choose to apply your border to all elements of that type.
A border can also apply to your Entire Book, which will cause it to appear on each page in your manuscript.
Individual Elements
If you want finer control over which elements display your border, select the Individual Elements item:
We also recommend entering a descriptive name in the Name field so that it will be easy to find in an element’s Page Border menu.
This menu appears in the gear menu to the right of an element’s title:
You’ll also find this menu in the main menu, under Chapter. You can use this version of the command to set the border for multiple elements at once, if necessary.